


Five Memories of the Perfect Gun

by mechadogmarron



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Character Study, Dali's Handgun, Other, Trans Persona 3 Protagonist, Vignettes, y'all I'm back on my bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29389269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechadogmarron/pseuds/mechadogmarron
Summary: When Himiko first saw Yukari holding that silvery Evoker in her hands, something started in her. She couldn't quite identify it, but it burned, and when Himiko took it from her, when Himiko held it to her head, when Himiko confronted death, it bloomed.
Relationships: Female Persona 3 Protagonist/Sanada Akihiko, Female Persona 3 Protagonist/The Evoker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Five Memories of the Perfect Gun

_The perfect gun exists in the savage state  
The perfect gun confers omnipotence  
The perfect gun will follow the free tendencies of desire  
The perfect gun is like a rosary around the neck_

_\- Mark Griffin_

1.

When Himiko first saw Yukari holding that silvery Evoker in her hands, something started in her. She couldn't quite identify it, but it burned, and when Himiko took it from her, when Himiko held it to her head, when Himiko confronted death, it bloomed. 

Himiko did not want to give the Evoker back, but something in her told her that she should. So she did.

Not long after, she was issued her own Evoker, and then, and only then, did she feel whole. The muzzle against her head quickened her breath in a way entirely inappropriate for combat; she danced through fights, Orpheus within her, without her. They had told her she would summon her Persona but had not told her what Agi would feel like as it ran through her veins, hotter than when she’d been four years old and learned for herself why not to play with the stove. It felt like dying; it felt like living. It made her crave more, more, more, until her spellpower ran dry and she felt herself a husk, admittedly one rejuvenated by her work. 

She did not ask Junpei if his own fire magic felt the same. She had the sense that it did not. 

That was her life at Tartarus. It wasn't long after, however, that she began to experiment. 

2.

The barrier in Tartarus was shimmering, beautiful, impenetrable. They investigated and left, and she was left with the very real concern that she now had nothing to do at night. She had gone each evening, desperate for more of that power. If one of them had been too injured, well, she'd fought on her own, at least a bit, and if _she_ was too injured, then she didn't have to worry about the Dark Hour. She always slept well when she was hurt. 

She tried to sleep through it, the first night, but the Dark Hour came and she woke to that eerie green light. Her heart pumped. To confront death was to confront what it meant to be alive, and she craved the adrenaline, the feeling of the barrel against her skull. Though there was no point in it, she pulled out her Evoker. What would it feel like? 

It was a beautiful weapon. At first glance, it really did look like a gun, but there were the ever-so-slight signs it wasn't. The barrel was lathe-turned, like many hand-smithed guns; the S.E.E.S. mark was cut into it. It was something of a mystery why; they hardly wanted anyone tracing them back to the weird little school club were one somehow lost. But it didn't really matter; no one was stupid enough to lose their Evoker. The wood inlay on the grip fit perfectly into her hands, as though it had been made for her, though given that Yukari's had too, it had to be a coincidence. She wouldn't complain. 

The trigger didn't feel quite like a real gun's trigger. She didn't know _how_ she knew that, when she'd never held a real gun, but something in her told her it was just a bit different, something from inside that strange well from which she imagined that Pharos rose from. Something differentiated her from her fellows, made her perhaps a bit less than human, a bit more than human, and touching the Evoker brought it to the forefront. 

The Evoker never ran out of the shimmering blue mist that seemed to pour out its barrel when she shot it. It was a weapon that needed no ammunition, a weapon that could give her the power to burn another human being alive, and they'd just handed it to her, because she had the power. She couldn't believe how lucky she was, couldn't believe how lucky _they_ were that no Persona user had gone on a destructive rampage. Were there Persona users elsewhere in Japan? Outside Japan? Did they know what they could do, if they were only pushed to the brink, if they only mimed their own deaths? There was more to the Evoker than that, of course, but that was the core of it. 

It was smooth in her hands, that machined steel. Anyone could've wielded it, but the way it yielded to her seemed unique: a partnership between woman and simple machine. Together, the could accomplish things that she had once very literally thought impossible, and without even breaking a sweat. Together, they were capable of anything. She had no doubt that the Shadows would grow stronger, but so would she. And her Evoker, unlike her more traditional weapons, unlike her armor, unlike her accessories, would not need to be replaced. 

With a sigh, she held it to her head once more. There was no recoil, yet when she triggered it in Tartarus, she found her head and hand moving as if it were a real gun, her body staggering to keep up with the thrill of overcoming yet another symbolic death. Would it be the same here? What would happen if she just... summoned her Persona, called it out for no particular reason, just to see what would happen? Would the Chairman know? Would he care? It was practice, after all, practice for a task that was as lifesaving as it was deadly. It was hard to argue she shouldn't try it. 

She imagined Orpheus for a moment. He was incredibly feminine, but she was fairly certain he was still a man; cross-gendered Personae did not seem common, or at least none of the other members of the Investigation Team had one, but they couldn't be all that rare. After all, he was the mask she had so long worn - a cold kind of masculinity that draped around her frame, uncomfortable and yet familiar. She had cast him off, but he had remained, at least in her heart. He was a memento, a beautiful memento. It almost made her nostalgic for the misery that she had once known. Almost. 

She had recruited a few other Personae in the tower, but she couldn't bring herself to fuse him away. She wore every mask because she adapted to everything, but she would not forget the mask that had taught her how to do that, how to become like a mirror to every onlooker, until they had called her a friend for years and yet could not name a single thing about her. Sometimes she wondered if there was anything to her at all. The Fool, indeed. 

But she didn't have to worry about that, not with the Evoker. The Evoker was a thing. It had a soul, maybe, in some vague animist sense, but it was a thing, and it wouldn't judge her for her fashion sense, for her ability to fit in, for her perceived lack of a true self. It only wanted to help her put on a mask, only wanted to help her harness the true power of the masks she put on.

She ran her fingers along its grip, felt it against her skull. She had never considered a gun before, not at any level. Guns were for cops; she had no respect for law enforcement, so she had no respect for guns. But her interest was growing. She followed Airsoft and paintball blogs now. Their weapons were nothing compared to the Evoker, but she enjoyed seeing them, enjoyed seeing their passion. They didn't know what it was like to trust your life to a weapon, but they trusted their honor in their weird little paintball tournaments, and she could, at some level, relate. 

3.

Akihiko wasn't a bad man, but his flirtations felt unnatural, uncomfortable. There was nothing between them, but she mimed them back. His heart, she knew, was in another place. She didn't really care where. 

But she wanted a relationship. A trial relationship, one where she could learn the world around her through another person. Since the incident, she had been hollow and quiet, but fighting Shadows had her blood pumping again. And she wanted to know more. So she experimented. She thought about him, naked, above her. Nothing. Beneath her. Nothing. Weirder stuff, then: blindfolds, handcuffs. There was simply nothing erotic about Akihiko tied up and shivering beneath her. _Interesting_ , sure; she felt _powerful_ thinking about it. But not sexual. 

She had to face it: Akihiko wasn't really hot.

No, if anything, his Persona was hotter than he was. What did that mean, really? Hell, _her_ Persona was hotter. Orpheus could get it. Did Personae have genitalia? If she summoned Orpheus, would she even be able to feel him? She let her mind wander along those lines, the feeling of her own need to lie to the world wrapping his sweet arms around her, whispering a strange language she couldn't understand. The knowledge she was complete in her incompleteness as he touched her. The muzzle of the Evoker against her head. 

That _last_ one was particularly... evocative. She would go with evocative, because to call it anything less seemed wrong and to call it anything more seemed like admitting something she wasn't quite ready to admit. There was nothing wrong with evocative as a description. It got the point across. 

She trusted her life to the Evoker. Trusting her heart to the Evoker seemed ill-advised. Someday, this war on the human psyche would be over, and it would be time to return it. If she let herself think about it too much, her heart might break. Worse, she might do something she would regret. 

4\. 

It took three nights to give up on the resolve. To do it. She waited for the Dark Hour to come, locked her door, shrugged off her uniform. She liked her bra too much to take it off, and she'd never been able to touch herself if she could see what she had downstairs. It was easier to leave it as a vague, uncomfortable afterthought. Not that she could really ignore it, but if she couldn't see it, she could justify it in her subconscious enough to take care of business. 

She held the Evoker to her head, pulled the trigger, and --

Mist appeared, but Orpheus was only present as a flicker before he faded with it. With no enemy, no mana, no life-force, he had no purpose. He was a paper-thin creature, with no hope of becoming anything else. But her heart pounded, her blood rushed. The mist quickened her blood and she felt some echo of her past life settle over her and just as quickly dissipate, leaving her confused and hot. The muzzle was enough. Just the muzzle. 

She couldn't explain it. But she trusted her life to the Evoker, trusted her soul to the Evoker, trusted her everything to the Evoker. She could trust it with this, too. No one would have to know. To them, she would be Akihiko's girlfriend, at least until that inevitably collapsed in on itself and she could play the role of too heartbroken to date another man. But here, where it was just woman and gun, she could be something different, a more complete version of herself. 

She didn't pull the trigger again. She took the weapon and pressed it against her chest, imagining a shot through the heart. What Persona lay there, in her purest self? Stripped of the mind, what masks would she wear? She couldn't convince herself that absent her overthinking brain her spirit would be unguarded; she knew herself. Wearing masks was who she was. Was who she would always be. Loving the Evoker, understanding the Evoker, trusting the Evoker -- that was just one more thing to mask over. 

It was an acceptable lie, to have this moment to herself, to explore her body in the muzzle of a gun. She would not allow them to take it from her. 

5.

The Evoker was joined to her, as the Great Wall, a stone weapon against stone skin. Very little of her was conscious, but she felt a comfort in it. 


End file.
